Technical Staff

Genetics

Texas Biomed's Department of Genetics works to advance human health through basic biomedical research with animal and human populations, specifically by characterizing the genetic components of susceptibility to common diseases of public health importance. Once the individual genes influencing a given disease are known, this genetic information can be used in drug development efforts to find more effective cures or methods of prevention for disease. The information can also be used to target available interventions to those individuals most likely to develop disease. Ongoing research efforts are focused on the influence of genetic and environmental factors on heart disease, obesity, diabetes, psychiatric disease, parasitic infections, and osteoporosis.

Projects

The red baboon (Papio hamadryas papio) was first explored more than thirty years ago as a nonhuman primate model of primary generalized epilepsy in humans, and remains one of the best characterized electroclinical animal models for juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.